Twitter, Facebook meet Big Brother

Federal agencies have realized they can mine social media for intel to help thwart potential terrorist strikes, keep tabs on domestic protests and better help citizens after a natural disaster. But privacy groups are clamoring for Congress to intervene, likening it to Big Brother.

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“That’s a gray area we’re all trying to define,” Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, told POLITICO. “The concept that the government would somehow be monitoring and storing inquiries of individual Web activities — many would find that disconcerting.”

It’s a reality in the social-media generation, however. The federal government informally has been combing Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social networks for publicly available citizen tidbits for years. Now, several agencies — the FBI and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency included — are seeking custom tracking technologies to help them scrape social-media sites by computer for certain keywords or trending topics that could help provide them with real-time intelligence.

Privacy advocates have taken to the courts to fight federal agencies to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests on these programs, which they are concerned have the potential to not only invade privacy but silence peaceful dissent.

“I think the government itself is a little schizophrenic on this,” said Jim Dempsey, vice president of public policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a cyberliberties group.

“On the one hand, there’s clearly the appropriate desire to say, ‘When a hurricane hits, we want to get information on the ground.’ Then there are others that say, ‘We also want to hear about protests and demonstrations,’” Dempsey added.

The Department of Homeland Security has drawn quite possibly the most public scrutiny for its online tracking efforts. The agency now mines Twitter and Facebook for a list of hundreds of keywords, ranging from “snow” to “cyberattack.” DHS contends the monitoring program is limited in scope and focuses only on events, not people.

Still, two privacy groups — the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation — have filed separate lawsuits against DHS over the release of documents about policies and contracts governing its social media monitoring program. EPIC is also calling for DHS to suspend its program in light of recent disclosures.

Lawmakers aren’t sitting on the sidelines either. DHS’s top privacy officials were grilled in front of Meehan’s subcommittee in February and could have to answer more questions in the future.

“We’re still concerned about who actually was directing the investigators to make specific inquiries,” Meehan said of the DHS social media monitoring program. “We do intend to follow up on this, on this issue.”